I support the use of the Death Penalty in severe cases where the criminal has been found guilty of the most heinous and serious crimes.  My primary examples to support my opinion will be the terrorist, Timothy McVeigh and the mass-murderer, Jeffrey Dahmer.

Between both of these individuals, nearly 200 people were killed.  168 men, women and children were bombed to death in their office, or daycare center by the Ryder truck Timothy McVeigh has chosen as his weapon.  Jeffrey Dahmer killed, and then performed various sexual acts with the bodies of 17 young men, before dismembering and eating parts of their bodies.

There are individuals on this planet that have the capacity to kill without effort.  These people are not capable of existing in society.  Their minds are set at such an angle that they believe their actions to be acceptable.

For Timothy McVeigh, his beliefs were those of a radical American.  He believed that in order to improve the political situations within the United States, which he honored and cherished, he would have to shed some blood.  He believed that when he was blowing up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, that he was cleansing America from undesirables.  He was mistaken because he thought the ATF, who had bungled the Branch Dividian Complex cult led by David Koresch, had offices in the building.  They did not.  He set the bomb in a Ryder moving truck, walked away, and detonated the bomb which killed 168 men, women and children.  He felt no remorse for the act.  When he was found, the shirt he was wearing said “"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."[1]  To be so cold-hearted, to feel so little remorse, and to not admit his mistake showed Timothy McVeigh would not be able to be rehabilitated.  The man needs to be put to death.

Jeffrey Dahmer killed, between 1978 and 1991, 17 young men.  Most of the men and boys were homosexual.  Dahmer would choose his victims from the neighborhood in which he lived.  He was even reported to the authorities when a 14 year old boy was found by a neighborhood girl to be walking, nude and drugged, down the street.  The girl, and her mother, both African-American, told the police officers where the boy had come from.  When they knocked on the door of Dahmer’s apartment and they asked after the boy,

Dahmer lied and told them he was his 19 year old lover.  Since the police did not want to address homosexuality, they just left the young man there, and he was immediately strangled to death by Jeffrey Dahmer.  They believed Dahmer because he was a white man in a predominantly ethnic neighborhood.  The acts that Dahmer committed against the young men were heinous in every sense of the word.  He would lure them to his apartment offering to photograph them in erotic poses, and when he got them in his home, he would kill them, and then either have sex with their dead bodies, or masturbate over them.  When he was finished, he would dismember their bodies, cut off their heads, and take the skin off the skulls.  He collected the skulls, and would cook and eat their genitals.  He believed that he had ultimate power over these people.  His entire life was encompassed around his fascination with dead things.  He would crush the bones of the dead animals his father would pull from under the house when he was merely 4 years old, and by the time he was 7, he would take the heads of dead animals, and impale them and display them in the yard.  His parents did not recognize the signs even though his father was a very educated man.  They did not address any of his problems until he became an alcoholic in his late teens.  They convinced him to join the service.  He joined the Army after high school, but was discharged when he could not control his alcoholism.  Jeffrey Dahmer was incapable of adapting to normal society.  He had such a psychological need to gratify himself over the dead bodies of these young men.  Jeffrey Dahmer was an extremely articulate and charming individual.  He was able to not only fool his victims, but the police officials as well, for many years before being caught because of the smell of rotting human remains coming from his apartment.  He had the body parts posed in bizarre positions on his bed, and in cooking pots.  They found human heads in the refrigerator.  He quietly went with them when he was found out. 

Dahmer also did not show any remorse for his actions.  He believed that what he was doing was alright because they came willingly to his home, and he was stronger than them.  He controlled the power over them, and they were his to keep, and do with as he chose.  He killed his victims before having sexual contact with him because he felt that way they would not leave him.  He killed the one boy who had run away because he did not like the rejection.  He felt the power over these individuals.  "Skulls in locker, cannibalism, sexual urges, drilling, making zombies, necrophilia, drinking alcohol all the time, trying to create a shrine, lobotomies, defleshing, calling taxidermists, going to grave yards, masturbating.....This is Jeffrey Dahmer, a runaway train on a track of madness..."[2]

Timothy McVeigh was sentenced to death.  His defense attorney tried to appeal the ruling by showing new documents that were found by the FBI.  The judge refused to hear the appeal motion because he said that the documents did not change the facts in the case that proved McVeigh to be guilty.  He was executed for the horrific crime on June 12, 2001.  This will never bring back the lives of the 168 people, some of who were children, who were killed by his careless and deliberate act.  If anyone deserved to be put to death, it is a terrorist; especially a terrorist who professes to be a true American.  No one has the right to take another person’s life for a “cause.”

Jeffrey Dahmer was not put to death in the traditional sense.  His sentence was set at 15 years for each person killed for a total of 957 years.  He died in prison at the hands of another inmate on November 28, 1994, after serving less than 6 months of his sentence.  The inmate was a schizophrenic black man who viewed Dahmer as his enemy because of all the young black men Dahmer had killed and done horrible things to.  He did not get the death penalty, but lived for a death sentence.  He had asked the court to give him death.  That he did not deserve to live.  He believed himself to be sick, as the defense attorney and media had portrayed him to be. 

In my opinion, there are people who are so evil, so wrong in their actions that the only recourse to handle such an individual is to put them to death.  I believe they should be given the appeal process, because there are sometimes errors made by the criminal justice system, but when all have been exhausted within a reasonable amount of time, the person should be put to death.  If they have changed their lives, if they have “found God” it does not change the fact that they took someone’s life.  In the Bible, the 5th Commandment states: “Thou shalt not kill.”[3]  How much clearer can it be?  I think that the death penalty is one of the biggest deterrents to murder in the judicial system.  If the justice is swift, and the sentence is carried out in a short amount of time, then more people may think twice about taking another life.  Those on death row should not live there for twenty five years.  They should be put to death within a very short time after their appeals have been exhausted.  If they are guilty, they are guilty, and no amount of time sitting behind bars in a prison is going to change that fact.  The money that is being spent on taking care of someone who has been sentenced to death could be better spent in finding others who can benefit from rehabilitation or prison sentences that would allow them to regain entrance into society.  With the government always stressing they do not have the monetary resources available to do adequate work at catching criminals, they should consider who they are paying money for, and remove those who have already been found guilty, and sentenced to death, from their budgets, permanently.

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